The present invention relates to package handling apparatus for testing flexible packages and packing the acceptable packages vertically into cartons.
The development of equipment that can test and package fragile snack food such as potato chips to ensure delivery to the retail customer in an undamaged condition is the principal objective of this invention. In packaging fragile foods the bag is often inflated so that the sealed bag is in the form of a pillow and the product occupies the space defined by the bubble of air confined within the bag. The pillow like packages facilitates protecting the product from being crushed. If such a properly inflated bag is compressed between two flat surfaces, the bag will resist being compressed beyond a certain depth. This is assuming that the product contained in the bag is evenly distributed over a layer having a depth less than said certain depth. However in the process of filing and sealing the bags the product is dropped into the bag through the open top. As a result the product often becomes clustered in the bottom of the bag. If this concentration of material in the bottom of the bag is thicker than the certain depth then the inflated bag does not protect the product from being crushed. In fact when the product is clumped together it can be crushed and damaged in the test to determine whether the bag is properly pneumatically sealed. Thus concentration of the product into clumps must be avoided and clumps that do exist must be untangled and spread out without damaging the product.
Since the inflated bag can best protect the product when the product is spread over a level layer it is important that all testing and processing of the filled and pneumatically sealed bag be accomplished with the bag in a horizontal orientation.
Fragile foods packaged in inflated bags become vulnerable to being crushed when the bags are packaged in cartons with the longitudinal axis of the bag horizontal. This is particularly true when numerous layers of bags are involved. The weight from the upper bags exert pressure on lower bags which can result in the deflation of some lower bags. These deflated bags have lost their protective cushion and the product can then be crushed. This can be avoided if instead of packaging the bags horizontally they are packaged in a single layer with the longitudinal axis of the bag extending vertically.
A carton filled with vertically orientated bags can receive the maximum number of bags if the product in each bag was arranged in an even layer before packaging and retained in an even layer after packaging. However if during the process of packaging bags with their longitudinal axis extending vertically the product becomes concentrated in the bottom of the bag then a reduced number of bags will fit into the carton.